Find a lover who can tickle your frontal lobe
THE frontal lobe is where it’s at.
All this effort trying to meet the perfect bloke, when all along it was as simple as rewiring the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
There’s a clear scientific explanation why you haven’t met the love of your life.
Because proactively searching, scouring bars and RSVP.com will only procure you the same lovers as the ones who’ve gone before, ones who caused you mountains of grief.
Same bloke, different haircut. That is, unless you reform your neural nets.
Just ask Dr Joe Dispenza, one of the stars of the hit docu-drama, What The Bleep Do We Know. I did.
He’s in Australia trying to convince us personal change is not only possible but imperative.
“Talk to me about love,” I said to the man who’s world famous for suggesting we create each day the way we want it.
“It’s simple,” he said.
“If you don’t like yourself, you’ll attract your lowest common denominator.
“When you shift and are no longer living through your past, that’s when Mr Right walks through the door.”
Relationships quantum physics-style, where chance meetings and cosmic connections come crashing back to reality with the observation that the wiring of the brain is running the show.
Apparently most of us operate in a primitive survival state, seeking out partners whose histories match ours.
People who are like our parents. Eg: someone used to feeling unworthy will look for someone to perpetuate that.
We make subconscious emotional agreements with romantic prospects, choices based on genetic wiring, which is just dandy until the love chemicals dissipate, which they always do.
Then it becomes hard work.
“Why’s love so elusive?” I ask the guru of brain change.
“It’s not,” he grins.
“The best advice when looking for a life partner: Change yourself. Ask: ‘Would I fall in love with me?’
“If the answer’s no, get about changing the things you don’t like, and only when you fall in love with yourself, someone else will too.
“I’d never be in a relationship you have to work at.
“Just work on yourself and be with someone who does the same and you get to share your greatness with them.”
Ah, that old chestnut.
Loving yourself.
At least science shows it’s much easier than once thought.
Where it used to be accepted that our brains were hardwired and unchangeable, neuroscience now dictates we’re a work in progress.
Each time we have a new thought, a cluster of neuro chemicals is released, ingraining fresh pathways on the brain.
I know. I saw the pictures.
No need to keep going back to commitment-phobe prototypes.
Change is our choice.
Not changing the other half or getting a new one, but responding to circumstances in a different way.
It’s like breaking an addiction, to singledom, or unfulfilling relationships.
And we’re on our way.
Under wise counsel, I once took a six month break from men to allow myself to reprogram.
To dive back in would have been inviting more of the same.
As Dr Dispenza told me: “Whoever you’re with is a reflection of who you are.
“They can bring out the best in us or the worst. Choose someone who brings out the best”.
Which brings us back to the frontal lobe.
When we make a conscious choice to act in a certain way, we activate the part of the brain which it’s now proven permits us to learn from experience and decide what to do differently next time. It’s our greatest hope.